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If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?

Ai Weiwei

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Ai Weiwei
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 18
Architect
Consultant
Contemporary Artist
Designer
Film Director
Human Rights Activist
Painter
Photographer
Sculptor
Social Activist
Peking
Wei-wei Ai
Weiwei Ai
Ai Wei Wei
Human
Humans
Artists
Dignity
Rights
Speak
Artist
Else
Cannot

More quotes by Ai Weiwei

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Even though everybody who looked at me would call me a Chinese artist, that's the 1980s. New York in the '80s was not so interesting. I think it's quite narrow-minded. There wasn't much encouragement or opportunities for any artist - not just Chinese artists.
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If people are being abused or even killed during an arrest, this is highly disturbing.
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To give a price to an artwork, no matter how high or low, is always absurd. It's not something that can be measured by money or by certain numbers.
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In a society that restricts individual freedoms and violates human rights, anything that calls itself creative or independent is a pretence. It is impossible for a totalitarian society to create anything with passion and imagination.
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China seems unpredictable because it has a distinct culture and social system. It is still a mystery to other parts of the world, even though the veil of China has been lifted many times as a result of globalization.
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Everything is art. Everything is politics.
Ai Weiwei
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There are no outdoor sports as graceful as throwing stones at a dictatorship.
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I'm not a writer, but today I think you have to be everything. As an artist you have an obligation to let people know what is on your mind and why you're doing this.
Ai Weiwei
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I spend a lot of time talking to journalists.
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To work in architecture you are so much involved with society, with politics, with bureaucrats. It's a very complicated process to do large projects. You start to see the society, how it functions, how it works. Then you have a lot of criticism about how it works.
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Mass production is nothing new. Weren't cathedrals built through mass production? The pyramids?... Paintings can be painted with the left hand, the right hand, someone else's hand, or many people's hands. The scale of production is irrelevant to its content.
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In a society like this there is no negotiation, no discussion, except to tell you that power can crush you any time they want — not only you, your whole family and all people like you.
Ai Weiwei
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Chinese citizens have never had the right to really express their opinions in the constitution it says you can, but in the real world it is more dangerous. In the west people think it's a right they're born with. Here it's a right given by the government, and one that's not really practised.
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Freedom of expression is a very essential condition for me to make any art. Also, it is an essential value for my life. I have to protect this right and also to fight for the possibility.
Ai Weiwei
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New York is a city where you're so alone, you're an individual, you can disappear. You can make something happen. But it's very different to make something happen in the art world.
Ai Weiwei
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Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.
Ai Weiwei
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Any design, any city, any kind of craziness or tragedy, it all comes from a long time of preparation.
Ai Weiwei
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The society was so different [in China] - it was a feudalistic society. It didn't come to a point of industrial revolution until twenty years ago.
Ai Weiwei
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It [success] is really by mistake.
Ai Weiwei
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Expressing oneself is like a drug. I'm so addicted to it.
Ai Weiwei